Simpson Jokes Quotes

Q: What do Jesus and Nicole Brown Simpson have in common? A: They were both killed by the Joooooooose.

We still couldn’t use “ass” any way we pleased. In one script, we had the phrase “up his ass”; Fox censors asked us to change it to “in his ass.” That seemed worse, but we did as they asked.

God always listens to my prayers, then does the exact opposite.

Das Bus,” The Simpsons (season 9, episode 14) A tongue-in-cheek retelling full of clever references to Golding’s novel. After their school bus veers off a bridge during a Model United Nations field trip, Bart, Lisa, and their classmates find themselves stranded on a desert island. Overt allusions to fear (of an island monster), hoarding of resources (junk food salvaged from the sunken bus), warring factions (those who support Bart, and those who oppose him), a violent chase scene (Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse running for their lives), and a final voiceover (about how the children learned to function as a society until they were rescued) serve as inside jokes for knowledgeable viewers.

THEIR GRANDKIDS MAKE THEM DO IT. This was the case with George Harrison, and it made us all feel very old.

So Smithers is the first man in history to go from black and straight to white and gay. The second was Michael Jackson.

I went into college knowing Latin and calculus. After four years, I'd forgotten them both. Blame the apple bong for that.

featured an eight-year-old boy who saved his friend who was choking to death. When asked where he learned the Heimlich, he said, “It was on a poster on The Simpsons.” True story.

Our team of Korean animators hand-draws twenty-four thousand cels to make one episode of The Simpsons; these days, color is added by computer, but for the first decade of the show, each cel had to be hand-painted.

We didn’t even have a real office at the time. The studio had so little faith in us, they housed us in a trailer. I assumed that if the show failed, they’d slowly back the trailer up to the Pacific and drown the writers like rats.

with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke—“Have you heard the news about Schrödinger’s Cat? It died today; wait—it didn’t, did, didn’t, did …”; high-volume discourse on who’s the best Bond; on Gilmour and Waters and Syd; on hyperreality; dollar-pound parity; Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes’s myths; “Make mine a double”; George Michael’s stubble; “Like, music expired with the Smiths”; urbane and entitled, for the most part, my peers; their eyes, hopes, and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers in statu pupillari; they’re sprung from the loins of the global elite (or they damn well soon will be); power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast—I don’t knock it, it’s me; and speaking of loins, “Has anyone told

I took all this criticism very personally, thinking I was bringing about America’s moral decay. So I decided to write children’s books. This was a stretch for me, because I hate children. But, Dr. Seuss hated children. So did Hans Christian Andersen. Lewis Carroll loved children in a way that’s illegal in forty-eight states. (I mentioned this in a lecture, and someone asked, “What are the two states where it’s okay?” That’s how I met R. Kelly.)

If a giant sinkhole opened up and swallowed Harvard University, I’d think, Poor sinkhole. I spent four years at Harvard and I hated the place. I’m not alone: In a 2006 poll, the Boston Globe ranked schools in terms of fun and social life. Harvard came in fifth . . . from the bottom. Amazing. I couldn’t imagine four schools less fun than Harvard. But then I saw the list. The four schools ranked below us were: Guantanamo Tech Chernobyl Community College The University of California at Aleppo, and Cornell

The Worst Man in Australia Australians love The Simpsons, except, naturally, the episode where the family goes there. That episode was condemned in the Australian parliament, which is a Hooters, by the way. They didn’t object to us saying the Australian penal system involved kicking offenders with a giant boot, or that their prime minister’s office was an inner tube in a pond. Nope. What they didn’t like was our cast’s attempt at doing an Australian accent. Mind you, the true Australian accent is semi-incomprehensible

This was the tedious process by which I found great writers, like Greg Daniels (creator of The Office) and Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, who three years later had my job running the show. In both cases, they had written pitch-perfect Seinfeld scripts. Greg’s was set entirely in a single parking space and was so good that Seinfeld actually produced it. Bill and Josh’s script had George Costanza accidentally swallowing a jagged piece of glass at a party; all the guests stay for hours, waiting to see if George “passes” the glass safely. It was cringe comedy at its very best.

The Buried Bishop’s a gridlocked scrum, an all-you-can-eat of youth: ‘Stephen Hawking and the Dalai Lama, right; they posit a unified truth’; short denim skirts, Gap and Next shirts, Kurt Cobain cardigans, black Levi’s; ‘Did you see that oversexed pig by the loos, undressing me with his eyes?’; that song by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl booms in my diaphragm and knees; ‘Like, my only charity shop bargains were headlice, scabies, and fleas’; a fug of hairspray, sweat and Lynx, Chanel No. 5, and smoke; well-tended teeth with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke — ‘Have you heard the news about Schrodinger’s Cat? It died today; wait — it didn’t, did, didn’t, did…’; high-volume discourse on who’s the best Bond … Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes’s myths; ‘Make mine a double’; George Michael’s stubble; ‘Like, music expired with the Smiths’; and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers…power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast — I don’t knock it, it’s me; and speaking of loins, ‘Has anyone told you you look like Demi Moore from Ghost?’; roses are red and violets are blue, I’ve a surplus of butter and Ness is warm toast.

My husband, Eric, has a joke he likes to say: “Ask Jessica to sing about Jesus or America, and she’ll be there. Super Bowl, backyard cookout, whatever you got, she’s coming to sing ‘God Bless America.’ ” And he’s right. Growing up in Texas, I sang that song over and over. From Memorial Day parades to Veteran’s Day pancake breakfasts—I was your girl. When I sang it at the East Room of the White House, I finally found out I had been flubbing the lyrics all those years. I was there to kick off the USO holiday tour for troops fighting in Afghanistan. It was the first time they let celebrities in after 9/11, because, well, they were busy. It was surreal to hear President Bush speak, thanking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his service, the transportation secretary for keeping the airlines safe. And then he added, “I want to thank Rob Schneider and Jessica Simpson as well.” They asked me to sing “God Bless America,” and I gave it my all. President Bush was in the front row, right next to Laura, and I watched him quietly sing along, his mouth moving along with mine. Something went wrong after we got to the mountains, though. I said, “to the rivers,” just like I always did, and, well, he knew it was “the prairies.” I was so embarrassed that I apologized to him and Mrs. Bush after. “I swear all this time I thought it was rivers!” I said. “That’s okay, Jessica,” he said. “God blessed the rivers, too.

There were three great comedians in my formative years—Bill Cosby, Bill Murray, and Richard Pryor—and they wrecked comedy for a generation. How? By never saying anything funny. You can quote a Steve Martin joke, or a Rodney Dangerfield line, but Pryor, Cosby, and Murray? The things they said were funny only when they said them. In Cosby’s case, it didn’t even need to be sentences: “The thing of the thing puts the milk in the toast, and ha, ha, ha!” It was gibberish and America loved it. The problem was that they inspired a generation of comedians who tried coasting on personality—they were all attitude and no jokes. It was also a time when comedy stars didn’t seem to care. Bill Murray made some lousy movies; Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy made even more; and any script that was too lame for these guys, Chevy Chase made. These were smart people—they had to know how bad these films were, but they just grabbed a paycheck and did them. Most of these comic actors started as writers—they could have written their own scripts, but they rarely bothered. Then, at the end of a decade of lazy comedy and half-baked material, The Simpsons came along. We cared about jokes, and we worked endless hours to cram as many into a show as possible. I’m not sure we can take all the credit, but TV and movies started trying harder. Jokes were back. Shows like 30 Rock and Arrested Development demanded that you pay attention. These days, comedy stars like Seth Rogen, Amy Schumer, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Jonah Hill actually write the comedies they star in.

There is a guy living in Macon, Georgia, whose name is Homer Simpson . . . and he works in a nuclear power plant! That poor guy. Having to live in Macon, Georgia.

and I use that term precisely. You can understand exactly one-half of what an Australian person says. Generally, it’s the first half: “You know, if I was running your Congress I’d langa danga langa danga danga.” But sometimes you can follow only the second half: “Langa danga langa danga and I woke up with a dead hooker covered in shrimp.” I’ve made six wonderful trips Down Under and have met only one local who didn’t love The Simpsons—he was my tour guide to the city of Cairns. What follows is a verbatim transcript from the long day we spent together:

He also cut another bit we liked—a character named Gravy Wallace who loved gravy. That was it—Gravy Wallace loved gravy. Maybe the showrunner was right and it was stupid. But maybe Gravy could’ve been the next Disco Stu.

I once asked her, after reading a Dixie cup riddle, “What’s worse than finding a worm in an apple?” The cup’s answer was “Finding half a worm in an apple.” My grandma Rosie’s answer? “Having someone shove an umbrella up your tuchis . . . and then open it.

A few years later, my wife and I were visiting Iran. Why? Because our idea of a vacation is most people’s idea of a hostage situation. If refugees want to get out of a place, we want to go there.

A minister in Iowa burned the book in his church parking lot. (This is not as bad as it sounds—before they can burn it, they’ve got to buy it.)

I began to think a joke was not truly good unless someone got hit for telling it.

In the States, the best ones I've ever eaten were at Bedford Street Bakery, in Brooklyn." "I heard the pastry chef at Qui raving about that place. The woman who runs it is Kiwi, right?" "Yeah. She bakes these beautiful seasonal pastries. I was there around this time four years ago, and there was one with apricots, crème pâtissière, and toasted almonds, and it was just gorgeous." Her shoulders dropped, and her mouth went slack remembering the pleasure. I pressed myself back into the hard bench to hold off the wave of horniness that crashed over me. Jesus, Kieran, get a grip. "That was a quality Homer Simpson drooling noise," I said. Jokes were safe. Jokes meant I wasn't turned on.

Meyer summarizes his code of honor as “(1) Show up. (2) Work hard. (3) Be kind. (4) Take the high road.” As he contributed in ways that revealed his skills without spawning jealousy, colleagues began to admire and trust his comedic genius. “People started to see him as somebody who wasn’t just motivated personally,” Tim Long explains. “You don’t think of him as a competitor. He’s someone you can think of on a higher plane, and can trust creatively.” Carolyn Omine adds, “Compared to other writers’ rooms I’ve been in, I would say The Simpsons tends to look longer for jokes. I think it’s because we have writers, like George, who will say, ‘No, that’s not quite right,’ even if it’s late, even if we’re all tired. I think that’s an important quality. We need those people, like George, who aren’t afraid to say, ‘No, this isn’t good enough. We can do better.’” In a classic article, the psychologist Edwin Hollander argued that when people act generously in groups, they earn idiosyncrasy credits—positive impressions that accumulate in the minds of group members. Since many people think like matchers, when they work in groups, it’s very common for them to keep track of each member’s credits and debits. Once a group member earns idiosyncrasy credits through giving, matchers grant that member a license to deviate from a group’s norms or expectations. As Berkeley sociologist Robb Willer summarizes, “Groups reward individual sacrifice.” On The Simpsons, Meyer amassed plenty of idiosyncrasy credits, earning latitude to contribute original ideas and shift the creative direction of the show. “One of the best things about developing that credibility was if I wanted to try something that was fairly strange, people would be willing to at least give it a shot at the table read,” Meyer reflects. “They ended up not rewriting my stuff as much as they had early on, because they knew I had a decent track record. I think people saw that my heart was in the right place—my intentions were good. That goes a long way.

But it isn’t the fun of DIY invention, urban exploration, physical danger, and civil disorder that the Z-Boys enjoyed in 1976. It is fun within serious limits, and for all of its thrills it is (by contrast) scripted. And rather obedient. The fact that there are public skateparks and high-performance skateboards signals progress: America has embraced this sport, as it did bicycles in the nineteenth century. Towns want to make skating safe and acceptable. The economy has more opportunity to grow. America is better off for all of this. Yet such government and commercial intervention in a sport that was born of radical liberty means that the fun itself has changed; it has become mediated. For the skaters who take pride in their flashy store-bought equipment have already missed the Z-Boys’ joke: Skating is a guerrilla activity. It’s the fun of beating, not supporting, the system. P. T. Barnum said it himself: all of business is humbug. How else could business turn a profit, if it didn’t trick you with advertising? If it didn’t hook you with its product? This particular brand of humbug was perfected in the late 1960s, when merchandise was developed and marketed and sold to make Americans feel like rebels. Now, as then, customers always pay for this privilege, and purveyors keep it safe (and generally clean) to curb their liability. They can’t afford customers taking real risks. Plus it’s bad for business to encourage real rebellion. And yet, marketers know Americans love fun—they have known this for centuries. And they know that Americans, especially kids, crave autonomy and participation, so they simulate the DIY experience at franchises like the Build-A-Bear “workshops,” where kids construct teddy bears from limited options, or “DIY” restaurants, where customers pay to grill their own steaks, fry their own pancakes, make their own Bloody Marys. These pay-to-play stores and restaurants are, in a sense, more active, more “fun,” than their traditional competition: that’s their big selling point. But in both cases (as Barnum knew) the joke is still on you: the personalized bear is a standardized mishmash, the personalized food is often inedible. As Las Vegas knows, the house always wins. In the history of radical American fun, pleasure comes from resistance, risk, and participation—the same virtues celebrated in the “Port Huron Statement” and the Digger Papers, in the flapper’s slang and the Pinkster Ode. In the history of commercial amusement, most pleasures for sale are by necessity passive. They curtail creativity and they limit participation (as they do, say, in a laser-tag arena) to a narrow range of calculated surprises, often amplified by dazzling technology. To this extent, TV and computer screens, from the tiny to the colossal, have become the scourge of American fun. The ubiquity of TV screens in public spaces (even in taxicabs and elevators) shows that such viewing isn’t amusement at all but rather an aggressive, ubiquitous distraction. Although a punky insurgency of heedless satire has stung the airwaves in recent decades—from equal-opportunity offenders like The Simpsons and South Park to Comedy Central’s rabble-rousing pundits, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—the prevailing “fun” of commercial amusement puts minimal demands on citizens, besides their time and money. TV’s inherent ease seems to be its appeal, but it also sends a sobering, Jumbotron-sized message about the health of the public sphere.

Before the interview, even casual observers seemed to have a cautioning word. ‘You’d better take a crash helmet,’ joked one mate, aware of Smith’s colourful reputation – in particular, stubbing a cigarette out on a pesky journalist’s forehead.

Now, anybody who's seen me sing or even tell a joke knows I have the facial expressions of Jim Carrey.

Comedy, like composting, involves smart recycling.

In the middle of her act, a young man shouted for her to expose her breasts. (Um, he didn’t say it exactly that way.) Now, Schumer had some choices. She could have simply had security throw the man right out. She could have yelled at him and given the audience a lecture on sexism. Instead, she got super friendly. Interrupting her routine, she shaded her eyes while the spotlight found the heckler. Looking as if she wanted to get to know him, Schumer asked the man what he did for a living. Sales, he said. “Sales?” Schumer repeated. “How’s that working out for you? ’Cause we’re not buying it.” Not the greatest joke in the world, but its spontaneity got her a laugh. More important, Schumer gained control of the occasion, seizing the power back from the heckler. Her goal was to entertain the audience, not to express any pain. When the idiot continued to harass her, Schumer still didn’t have him ejected. First she asked the audience to vote. This got a big cheer. As security escorted the man out, Schumer said, “I already miss him!

Seinfeld’s a hit? Give him a wife, you’ve got Mad About You. Throw in some kids—it’s Everybody Loves Raymond. Make it suck—and it’s Home Improvement.

He had a love of ‘childish fun’ and ‘a great sense of humour and loved bawdy jokes’.

I got the Simpsons job the same way I got a wife: I was not the first choice, but I was available.

someone turned our episode into an off-Broadway musical, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, a story of some postapocalyptic survivors who share only one cultural link: the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons. They recreate the script and perform it as a traveling theater troupe. In act 2 we see their play seventy-five years later: it’s become as ritualized and bizarre as a Greek Orthodox Mass. I’m

It takes us nine months, from concept to finished product, to make a single episode of The Simpsons.

21–23: Nerd.

One thing to remember about this prediction: “President Trump” was the punchline to the setup, “What’s the dumbest thing we could imagine America doing?” When the news of the world becomes jokes on The Simpsons, that’s satire. But when jokes on The Simpsons become the news of the world—well, that’s just fucked up.